The Hills Have Eyes 2 (Cert 18, 86 mins, Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, Horror/Thriller, also available to buy DVD £19.99)

A unit of ill-prepared National Guards and their gruff commanding officer, Sarge (Flex Alexander), head into the desert to deliver supplies to a team of scientists.

Finding the encampment deserted and evidence of foul play, Sarge leads most of his unit into the hills to investigate, leaving behind pacifist Napoleon (Michael McMillian) and beautiful 19-year-old enlistee Amber (Jessica Stroup) as look-outs. They inadvertently stumble upon one of the scientists, fatally wounded and barely clinging to life. Soon after, Sarge and base camp come under attack from cannibals.

In the hills, gung-ho trouble-maker Crank (Jacob Vargas), sassy mother Missy (Daniella Alonso), cool and detached Delmar (Lee Thompson Young) and speech-impaired Spitter (Eric Edelstein) fire on live targets for the first time. Annoyingly, the mutants have a habit of dodging bullets. To make matters worse, the only escape route is down into the mines, home to the cannibals.

The Hills Have Eyes 2 doesn’t scrimp on the graphic dismemberment and evisceration, imagining some very creative and gruesome deaths for the attractive cast, including one sequence that brings a horrific new meaning to pulling someone’s leg.

Character’s emotional arcs are all too brief, submerged beneath all those entrails, and as usual, the protagonists demonstrate stupidity in the face of danger.

Roy (Dylan McDermott) and his wife Denise (Penelope Ann Miller) uproot their family to rural North Dakota, where they intend to live on a farm and be at one with nature. The children – truculent 16-year-old Jess (Kristen Stewart) and her mute three-year-old brother Ben (Evan and Theodore Turner) – soon fall victim to the dark forces that engulf the farmhouse, including vicious birds and ghostly apparitions. However, the adults are blind to the evil.

Enigmatic handyman Burwell (John Corbett) is thankfully on hand to scare off the vicious birds and to help Roy harvest his sunflower crop. As the spirits gather in intensity, Jess realises that she must make her parents see the terrifying danger, before it is too late.

Celebrated Hong Kong directors Danny and Oxide Pang make their English language debut with this disappointingly half-baked horror.

A murderous flock of crows (largely computer generated) pick up where Hitchcock’s feathered fiends left off, before a completely unnecessary final reel twist that kills the film stone dead.

Stewart is convincing as the traumatised teen, haunted by past mistakes, and McDermott and Miller portray their parents with a suitable amount of scepticism, refusing to entertain their daughter’s crazy proclamations of doom. More fool them.

DVD Extras: none stated.

Rating: Two stars

The Namesake (Cert 12, 117 mins, Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, Romance/Drama, also available to buy DVD £19.99)

Award-winning director Mira Nair, who previously made Salaam Bombay! and Monsoon Wedding, reconsiders the clash between Indian and western culture in The Namesake, a gently paced love story based on the novel by Jhumpa Lahiri.

The film begins in late ’70s Calcutta. Abiding by the wishes of her parents, singer Ashima (Tabu) dutifully agrees to an arranged marriage to shy Ashoke Ganguli (Irrfan Khan), an engineer preparing to forge a new life in America. The newlyweds leave the familiarity of Calcutta and move to suburbia across the Atlantic, where Ashima struggles to integrate and devotes herself to raising two children, Nikhil (Kal Penn) and Sonia (Sahira Nair).

As their son grows up, he is torn between the traditions of his Indian heritage and the privileges of western living, eventually rejecting his birth name and re-christening himself Gogol, in honour of his old man’s favourite author.

The Namesake is a well-crafted if slightly pedestrian portrait of familial turmoil, cutting between the colourful bustle of India and the cold greys of the Big Apple.

Strong performances from Tabu and Khan are matched by a surprisingly affecting turn from Penn.

Milking the High School Musical cash cow even further, this concert DVD captures a live performance of the 42-date stage show in Houston, Texas where original cast members Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Tisdale, Lucas Gabreel, Corbin Bleu and Monique Coleman are joined by newcomer Drew Seeley for the all singing, all dancing love story about two kids from rival cliques who fall in love while rehearsing for their high school play.

Talented dancer Amaryllis Campos (Roselyn Sanchez) has never reached her full potential, and she is content to deliver pizzas while drifting through life with her boyfriend (Manny Perez). When her father dies, Amaryllis takes the chance to travel to New York to follow her dancing ambitions, and she is compelled to work in seedy strip bars to make ends meet, waiting for her shot at the big time.

At the ripe age of 64, Buddhadev Gupta (Amitabh Bachchan) is certain that he has seen all that life has to offer and is incredibly acidic and cynical about anyone who thinks otherwise. As the chef of London’s top Indian restaurant, Buddhadev is able to preside over his empire – the kitchen – with an iron fist, dazzling the customers with his fine cooking and annoying the staff with his arrogance.

Then Buddhadev meets 34-year-old Nina Verma (Tabu), an unmarried woman who dares to challenge his perspective of the world. An unlikely romance blossoms and as chaos consumes both of their lives, Buddhadev and Nina realise that together, they might just be the perfect ingredients for a loving and lasting marriage.

Drama based on a true story, starring Danny Glover as Vietnam veteran Jake Neeley, who escapes nightmarish memories of the war by secluding himself in a remote cabin in the woods. When terminally ill army buddy Henry (David Strathairn) arrives on Jake’s doorstep, the hermit is forced to bear the responsibility of raising his friend’s half-Vietnamese daughter Lenny (Zoe Weizenbaum), whose presence is a painful reminder of the past.

Set at the tail end of World War II, The Fallen recounts the experiences of three groups of soldiers in Northern Italy, caught up in the bloody conflict. While the young men from the United States Quartermaster Brigade of the 5th Army, the Italian Monte Rosa Division and the German 362nd Unit confront thoughts of victory and defeat, the locals become embroiled in their own violent struggle as fascist and communist forces clash head-on.

Terence Davies’ acclaimed 1988 drama is a film of two parts, shot a couple of years apart then welded together. In the opening segment, eldest daughter Eileen (Angela Walsh) prepares for her wedding and has to cope with the funeral of her domineering father (Pete Postlethwaite), who ruled the roost. Some months later, son Tony (Dean Williams) also prepares to walk down the aisle but the ghosts of the past continue to haunt the clan, dragging painful memories into the open. The DVD comes with a fully illustrated 24-page booklet including essays by Beryl Bainbridge and Adrian Danks.

Before he stormed the world as Austin Powers and the voice of Shrek, Mike Myers was a regular on the popular sketch show Saturday Night Live, bringing his unique brand of humour and character creations to the masses. This compilation of sketches from his six seasons includes Wayne’s World with Madonna and Aerosmith, “Coffee Talk with Linda Richman” featuring Madonna and Roseanne, plus guest appearances from Tom Hanks, Danny DeVito, Nicole Kidman, Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin.